Zenith Bank Plc and Guaranty Trust Bank Plc in 2017 jointly made N169.309 billion from trading in securities such as bonds and Treasury bills as customer deposits to both banks continue to grow. The two tier one banks last week released their full year results for 2017 posting a joint profit after tax of N348.4 billion. The results showed that Zenith Bank had recorded a 456.4 per cent increase in its trading gains which rose from N28.39 billion that was recorded in 2016 to N157.97 billion by the end of the 2017 financial year. GTB likewise saw its net gains on financial instruments rise from N5.21 billion to N11.33 billion during the 2017 financial year. The CBN in 2017 had in 2017 regularly held Open Market Operations auctions at rates between 17 and 18 per cent. Chief executive of Financial Derivatives, Bismarck Rewane had noted that close to 30 per cent of banks’ profit is made from Treasury Bills and OMO auctions, a situation operators in the real sector say is not encouraging lending by banks. While the deposit base of the two banks had increased in 2017, their loan portfolio continued to drop. Zenith’s deposit base had increased by 15 per cent last year from N2.98 trillion which it was in 2016 to N3.43 trillion as at December 31, 2017. However, its lending to customers was down by 8.2 per cent from N2.289 trillion in 2016 to N2.1 trillion in 2017. Also, GTB had recorded a 3.8 per cent spike in its deposit base which rose from N1.986 trillion to N2.062 trillion as at December 31, 2017 while its lending to customers declined by 8.8 per cent to N1.448 trillion. GTB profit after tax had risen to N170.47 billion in 2017 from N132.28 billion from the previous year while Zenith’s PAT rose N177.93 billion up from N129.65 billion. Analysts say the high level of bad loans in the industry is a major deterrent for banks to increase lending. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) had warned of the rising NPLs in the industry. IMF in its report on Nigeria recently noted the level of NPLs in the banking sector has risen to 15.5 per cent as at October 2017 with solvency ratios declining form 14.8 per cent to 10.5 per cent between December 2016 and October 2017, “reflecting difficulties in four small and medium-sized undercapitalized banks including one insolvent bank.” While impairments on loan losses of GTB had dropped from N65.29 billion in 2016 to N12.16 billion in 2017, Zenith’s impairment loss on financial assets rose significantly to N98.22 billion from N32.35 billion which it was in 2017.

http://www.akelicious.net/2018/03/zenith-gtb-make-n169bn-from-securities.html

top Nigeria's banks

God dey

Nice results, kudos to those hard working guyz.

Bad for the economy and good for the investors pocket. CBN needs to sit up.